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Review: Panaracer Gravel King Slick Tyres 700c x 32mm
The most significant change I have made to my Mercian so far is the tyres. Up until this year, I’d been pretty keen on the very puncture-resistant Schwalbe Marathon tyres and had them on my Kona Sutra and on the Mercian. However, having subscribed to Jan Heine’s Bicycle Quarterly, I was getting bombarded by sales […]
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Ride Report: Anglesey Bivvy Weekender
I forgot to mention it here but back in September I went on another bivvy trip with the Grass Up The Middle gang and I wrote up a ride report. You can find it on their site here.
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Pub grub, a triple bike and Aussie punk
I stumbled across this band, The Chats, the other day. Their ode to the smoke break, “Smoko”, went viral 4 years ago and so I am typically late to the party. I was working my way through their youtube channel and came across this great video for their track Pub Feed – it’s got mullets, […]
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Mid Year Review
I know it’s a cliché but I really cannot believe how fast this year has flown by. I’m conscious of the fact that I haven’t really written anything since I went on the Grass Up The Middle Bivvy Weekend in March. I had intended to remedy this by writing up a mid-year review around the […]
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Podcast: For your listening pleasure
I came across the Bikepacking Buds podcast the other day and since it made me all warm and fuzzy inside, I thought I would share it with you. The blurb reads: “a community led cycling podcast sharing inspiring stoies of bikepackers across the UK”. There’s four episodes to get stuck into, that cover topics such […]
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The Way Home: GUTM Spring Forward Bivvy Weekend Part Two
This is Part 2 of my ride report from the recent Grass Up The Middle Spring Forward Bivvy Weekend. For Part 1, click here. It was a clear morning when I woke from my slumber, I slept as well as I expected – not as good as I do in a real bed, but not […]
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My first overnight adventure!
I finally got my act in order and went on an adventure, with many thanks to Grass Up The Middle for organising their Spring Forward Bivvy Weekend event. We cycled from Sale to Macclesfield forest and spent a night under the stars in our bivy bags. I wrote up an article about it when I […]
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On Setting Goals
I didn’t really set any goals or resolutions at the start of this year. I kind of just let last year’s resolutions roll over, and the only bike related one was a rather non-committal nudge to ‘ride more’. Whilst that had worked to some degree, the idea of using more specific challenges and goals as […]
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Lessons from Midnite Bicycle League
Wow, things have been really busy lately. Work has been unusually demanding for this early in the year. After Christmas, I opened up a real can of worms by finally starting work on fixing up the upstairs of our house. I expected it to be bad (that’s probably the reason I’d been putting it off […]
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Mercian: Initial Thoughts
I don’t really know what possessed me to want another bike – the Kona Sutra and the Wayfarer were already covering all of my needs – but you know how it is. I’d been toying with the idea of a hand built English touring bike for a while, since before the Sutra came along to […]